{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://frost.house.gov/media/press-releases/one-year-out-2024-elections-congressman-frost-announce-new-votes-act-ensure", "Congressman Frost Announces New VOTES Act to Ensure All Servicemembers Can Participate in Elections", "2023-11-06", "2023", "2023-11", "Democrat", "House", "FL", "Maxwell Frost", "F000476", "frost.house.gov", "frost", "https://frost.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "ORLANDO, FL \u2014 Today, Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (FL-10) was joined by local Central Florida leaders as he unveiled the Voting Overseas Treated Equally for Servicemembers (VOTES) Act, legislation to support and protect the right to vote of servicemembers serving overseas.\n\nSpecifically, Congressman Frost\u2019s bill would fix a gap in federal law that only allows \u201cactive duty\u201d servicemembers stationed overseas to request an absentee ballot, excluding potentially thousands of overseas servicemembers who might have a different duty status such as \u201cactive service\u201d or \u201cinactive duty-training.\u201d\n\nThese servicemembers may be members of the Reserve or National Guard who are deployed as part of military drills or critical training exercises but who never receive \u201cactive duty\u201d status. In 2021 alone there were over 760,000 Reserve and National Guard servicemembers and it\u2019s unclear how many of those folks were stationed overseas and unable to participate in our democracy.\n\nFrost stood alongside Pernell Bush, a local U.S. Marine veteran, and Michael Adams from the City of Orlando\u2019s Veterans Advisory Council in calling the VOTES Act an important opportunity to reaffirm our support for the brave people currently protecting our very democracy.\n\n\u201cAs it stands right now, thousands of service members, many of whom have put their lives on the line and sacrificed being close to their families and friends in order to serve this country, are unable to participate in elections,\u201d said Congressman Maxwell Frost. \u201cIt is a huge oversight of our government that these servicemembers doing their honorable duty to defend and protect our democracy are currently being excluded from our democratic process. The bipartisan VOTES Act is our opportunity to extend the guarantee of being able to participate in democracy to all servicemembers, not just some.\u201d\n\nThe VOTES Act has been endorsed by American Legion, Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States, National Guard Association of the United States, and VoteVets.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T01:01:09Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://frost.house.gov/media/press-releases/one-year-out-2024-elections-congressman-frost-announce-new-votes-act-ensure"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7788408547639847, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}